Maybin met with team doctors Thursday in San Diego. Sunday, he’d made a diving catch in the outfield, landing with a thud and sustaining an injury not typically seen in baseball players.

The price for robbing the Dodgers’ Juan Uribe appeared steep. Maybin was initially expected to miss two to three months or more, should he have chosen surgery.

Now, according to Byrnes, he could be back in as soon as four to six weeks, though no timeline has been set.

There have been examples of other professional athletes suffering the same injury and forgoing surgery.

“I think every case is different,” Padres manager Bud Black said earlier Thursday. “You look at this injury, and there are guys who’ve not had it and guys who’ve had it.”

Most notably, quarterback John Elway ruptured the biceps tendon in his throwing arm. It was treated non-surgically, and Elway returned to the field less than three weeks later.

The Padres and Maybin are hoping for a similarly swift recovery. They dodged what could have been a season-ender when an MRI Monday showed no damage in Maybin’s shoulder capsule or rotator cuff. In 2010, he underwent surgery to repair a torn labrum in the same shoulder.

It was one of multiple injuries that have kept Maybin off the field. In 2013, he missed all but 14 games, first with a right wrist impingement and later with a torn posterior cruciate ligament in his left knee. The wrist, which had hindered Maybin since 2012, required season-ending surgery in September.